E-mail and Letter Writing to Santa Claus
Writing letters to Santa Claus has been a Christmas tradition for children for many years. These letters normally contain a wishlist of toys and assertions of good behavior. Some social scientists have found that boys and girls write different types of letters. Girls generally write longer but more polite lists and express the nature of Christmas more in their letters than in letters written by boys. Girls also more often request gifts for other people."Understanding What Christmas Gifts Mean to Children" by Jenniina Halkoaho and Pirjo Laaksonnen, pages 248 - 255 in "Young Consumers" and their reference to the 1994 article by Otnes, Cele, Kyungseung Kim, and Young Chan Kim. "Yes, Virginia, There is a Gender Difference: Analyzing Children's Requests to Santa Claus." in the Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 28, no. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 17–29 NORAD Tracks Santa Partners From the 2005 thru the 2008 NORAD Track Santa seasons, one could send e-mail to Santa Claus at the North Pole from the NORAD Tracks Santa website. From 2005 thru 2007 the e-mail to Santa Claus was handled by the NORAD Tracks Santa partner for e-mail to the North Pole for those years, Official Santa Mail http://www.officialsantamail.com/. For the 2008 NORAD Track Santa season, this was handled by the NORAD Tracks Santa partner for e-mail to the North Pole, Canada Post (Canada's Post Office). For the 2011 NORAD Track Santa season, instead of e-mail, one can send or receive personalized video messages from Santa Claus at the North Pole, using the NORAD Tracks Santa partner for personalized video messages, UGroup Media (Portable North Pole). Letter Writing to Santa and Other Winter Holiday Wizards as part of a class project ]] Many postal services allow children to send letters to Santa Claus. These letters may be answered by postal workers and/or outside volunteers. Writing letters to Santa Claus has the educational benefits of promoting literacy, computer literacy, and e-mail literacy. A letter to Santa is often a child's first experience of correspondence. Written and sent with the help of a parent or teacher, children learn about the structure of a letter, salutations, and the use of an address and postcode. (USPS) has the oldest Santa letter answering effort by a national postal system. Since 1940 this effort has been called "Operation Santa." ]] According to the Universal Postal Union (UPU)'s 2007 study and survey of national postal operations, the United States Postal Service (USPS) has the oldest Santa letter answering effort by a national postal system. The USPS Santa letter answering effort started in 1912 and since 1940 has been called "Operation Santa" to ensure that letters to Santa are adopted by charitable organizations, major corporations, local businesses and individuals in order to make children’s holiday dreams come true from coast to coast. Those seeking a North Pole holiday postmark through the USPS, are told to send their letter from Santa or a holiday greeting card by December 10 to: North Pole Holiday Postmark, Postmaster, 4141 Postmark Dr, Anchorage, AK 99530-9998. In 2006, according to the UPU's 2007 study and survey of national postal operations, France's Postal Service received the most letters for Santa Claus or "Père Noël" with 1,220,000 letters received from 126 countries. France's Postal Service in 2007 specially recruited someone to answer the enormous volume of mail that was coming from Russia for Santa Claus. Other interesting Santa letter processing information, according to the UPU's 2007 study and survey of national postal operations, are: * Countries whose national postal operators answer letters to Santa and other end-of-year holiday figures, and the number of letters received in 2006: Germany (500,000), Australia (117,000), Austria (6,000), Bulgaria (500), Canada (1,060,000), Spain (232,000), United States (no figure, as statistics are not kept centrally), Finland (750,000), France (1,220,000), Great Britain (750,000), Ireland (100,000), New Zealand (110,000), Portugal (255,000), Poland (3,000), Slovakia (85,000), Sweden (150,000), Switzerland (17,863), Ukraine (5,019). * In 2006, Finland's national postal operation received letters from 150 countries (representing 90% of the letters received), France's Postal Service from 126 countries, Germany from 80 countries, and Slovakia from 20 countries. * In 2007, Canada Post replied to letters in 26 languages and Deutsche Post in 16 languages. * Some national postal operators make it possible to send in e-mail messages which are answered by physical mail. All the same, Santa still receives far more letters than e-mail through the national postal operators, proving that children still write letters. National postal operators offering the ability to use an on-line web form (with or without a return e-mail address) to Santa and obtain a reply include Canada Post (on-line web request form in English and French), France's Postal Service (on-line web request form in French), and New Zealand Post (on-line web request form in English). In France, by 6 December 2010, a team of 60 postal elves had sent out reply cards in response to 80,000 e-mail on-line request forms and more than 500,000 physical letters. Canada Post has a special postal code for letters to Santa Claus, and since 1982 over 13,000 Canadian postal workers have volunteered to write responses. His address is: Santa Claus, North Pole, Canada, H0H 0H0 (see also: Ho ho ho). (This postal code, in which zeroes are used for the letter "O" is consistent with the alternating letter-number format of all Canadian postal codes.) Sometimes children's charities answer letters in poor communities, or from children's hospitals, and give them presents they would not otherwise receive. In 2009, 1,000 postal elves answered 1.1 million letters and 39,500 e-mail on-line request forms from children in 30 different languages, including Braille. In Britain it was traditional for some to burn the Christmas letters on the fire so that they would be magically transported by the wind to the North Pole. However this has been found to be less efficient than the use of the normal postal service, and this tradition is dying out in modern times, especially with few homes having open fires in their homes. Recently the national postal service Royal Mail has extended its delivery service to include Santa Claus' address, and allocated it a postcode. In 2010 the full address is: Santa Claus, Reindeer Land, SAN TA1.U.K. Royal Mail Christmas early posting competition for 2010 In Mexico and other Latin American countries, besides using the mail, sometimes children wrap their letters to a small helium balloon, releasing them into the air so Santa magically receives them. Starting in 2010, the Brazilian National Post Service, “Correios” formed partnerships with public schools and social institutions to encourage children to write letters and make use of postcodes and stamps. In 2009, the Brazilian National Post Service, “Correios” answered almost two million childrens' letters, and spread some seasonal cheer by donating 414,000 Christmas gifts to some of Brazil's neediest citizens. Through the years, the Finnish Santa Claus (Joulupukki or "Yule Goat") has received over eight million letters. He receives over 600,000 letters every year from over 198 different countries with Togo being the most recent country added to the list. Children from Great Britain, Poland and Japan are the busiest writers. The Finnish Santa Claus lives in Korvatunturi, however the Santa Claus Main Post Office is situated in Rovaniemi near the Arctic circle. His address is: Santa Claus’ Main Post Office, Santa’s Workshop Village, FIN-96930 Arctic Circle. The post office welcomes 300,000 visitor a year, with 70,000 visitors in December alone. Children can also receive a letter from Santa through a variety of private agencies and organizations, and on occasion public and private cooperative ventures. Two examples of private agencies and organizations are "Letter from Santa Claus" and "Free Letters from Santa Claus." An example of a public and private cooperative venture is the opportunity for expatriate and local children and parents to receive postmarked mail and greeting cards from Santa during December in Beijing, People's Republic of China under the auspices of the China Trade Commission, the Finnish Embassy in Beijing, Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi, Finland, and the People's Republic of China Postal System's Beijing International Post Office. Parents can order a personalized "Santa letter" to be sent to their child, often with a North Pole postmark. The "Santa Letter" market generally relies on the internet as a medium for ordering such letters rather than retail stores. In many countries, stamp collectors and others send their letters to post offices with Christmas-sounding names to have their mail postmarked. Examples in the United States: Christmas (Florida), Bethlehem (Maryland), Hope, Nazareth (Michigan), Saint Joseph (Missouri), Snow Shoe (Pennsylvania). In Canada: Christmas Island (Nova Scotia). Examples in Europe: Berne Bethlehem (Switzerland), St. Nikolaus (Germany), Christkindl (Austria). Winter Holiday and Christmas Post Offices Winter Holiday and Christmas post offices are places, where children during the Christmas and winter holiday season can send letters to Santa Claus and other Winter Holiday wizards, which if they have a return address can often be answered. The reply is either free or the cost of provided return postage. In many cases, a standardized form with child-friendly, Christmas and Winter holiday motifs is used. In many cases, the letter writers will receive a personalized reply. Most of the letters to Santa and other Winter Holiday wizards from children include a wishlist asking for certain toys, candy or other consumer items. Some children write illustrated letters and drawings along with heartfelt desires, for peace, security, an intact family, health, better academic performance, the recovery of a sick relative, or even a white Christmas. Winter Holiday and Christmas post offices exist in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Russia. Most of these post offices are under the auspices of national postal organizations and others are maintained by private organizations. Germany In 1965, Germany's first "Christmas post office" opened in Himmelsthür, a part of the city of Hildesheim in Lower Saxony whose name, appropriately, means "heaven's door." Over the years, other post offices in places that sound like they might be associated with Christmas have added special Christmas post offices, which are only open during specific months, usually from early November until late December. Those places include Engelskirchen ("angels' church"), Himmelpfort ("heaven's gate"), Himmelpforten ("heaven's gates") and Himmelstadt ("heaven's city"), Nikolausdorf ("Nicholas village") in Lower Saxony or St. Nikolaus in Saarland. The Christmas post office of Himmelpfort, in the German state of Brandenburg, is the only holiday post office in the five (5) eatern, formerly communist, states of Germany. Other The United States Postal Service (USPS) has the oldest Santa letter answering effort by a national postal system. The USPS Santa letter answering effort started in 1912. Swiss Post's program started in 1950 and currently comprises a team of six Santa Claus’s helpers in Chiasso, Ticino, Switzerland. Canada Post's program started in 1982 and uses more than 11,000 current and retired Canada Post employees, affectionately called Postal Elves. Mailing Addresses for Letters to Santa and other Winter Holiday Wizards References Category:NORAD Tracks Santa Wiki